Over the past five years, the unlikely success of Activision’s Skylanders franchise has blossomed into a full-blow genre. This year, there are three major entrants in toys-to-life space (not counting Nintendo’s own spin on things with Amiibo).

Everyone is having a great time in the Star Wars Battlefront beta (including our own Brian Shea) and we learned today it will actually be going a little longer, which is great news. Reddit has become a great source of crazy moments from the game, highlighting skilled players, crazy bugs (it is a beta after all), and generally unexpected moments. Below you will find a handful of our favorite moments that have been making the rounds online.

This is just hilarious and infinitely rewatchable.

This is a good reminder that this is a beta (also known as an unfinished game). That doesn't make it any less weird or enjoyable, though.

Assassin’s Creed Unity was a complete mess at launch. That fact can’t be sugar-coated; an array of technical issues prompted an outcry from gamers – resulting in an apology from Ubisoft and the discontinuation of the planned season pass. The release of barely functional games is not something to be taken lightly or excused, but in the case of Unity, the backlash may have scared players away from what eventually became a decent game.

In fact, I was one of those fans deterred by the problems surrounding Unity’s launch. After playing a few missions, I decided to wait until the dust settled before diving in – but that took so long that I just moved on to other games. Plus, I had already gotten my AC fix for the year thanks to Rogue. But now, with the release of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate only weeks away, I decided it was time to finally revisit Unity on PlayStation 4. To my surprise, I’m playing a fun (and functional) game!

If you’ve been avoiding Unity because of the prevailing sentiment that it’s a broken trainwreck, you should know that it’s safe to come back. The following is a rundown of common problems from the launch window that I’ve found to be improved or fixed completely during my time with Unity.

With the Super Mario series celebrating its 30th anniversary last month, there was a lot of discussion around the Game Informer office regarding our favorite Mario memories. While several of us have been enjoying creating our own levels in Super Mario Maker, nothing quite compares to a Super Mario game designed and released by Nintendo.

In our December 2009 issue, we ranked the top 200 games of all time. As you may have guessed, Mario’s core series made several appearances on that list. That list may have had different criteria than this one, but now you can check out where Mario fell on our list of the top 200 games of all time in 2009.

The countdown to Game Informer's annual December 31 Super Replay is under way, and we're actively searching for the best candidate for this esteemed honor. We'd like to introduce you, the Replay viewers, to help us hone in on the worst best game for this Super Replay.

We're intrigued by Escape From Bug Island, and today's Replay game, Deep Fear, a survival-horror game for Sega Saturn. Deep Fear never released stateside, so we decided to take a look at a Japanese import. Don't worry, all of the audio is in English, and we do our damned best to not speak over any cutscenes. We immediately fell in love with the high production values and wonderful cast of characters. We didn't want our time with Deep Fear to end. Is it a good candidate for the December 31 Super Replay? Let us know in the comments below.

We then introduce a new segment at the episode's break, perhaps showing how video game characters would treat the player if their dialogue wasn't scripted. The final segment of this episode takes us back to Replay: Season 3's beginnings, putting Kyle Hilliard's listening skills to the test.

Update: Now that our playthrough of Shenmue is complete, we're moving it from the Chronicles video section to Super Replay.

With Shenmue 3's Kickstarter officially funded, numerous people in Game Informer's community sent in requests for complete Super Replay playthroughs of the first two games in the Shenmue series. Several Game Informer staffers also expressed interest in either revisiting this series or seeing it for the first time. Since we already have numerous Super Replay projects in the works, yet wanted to get a Shenmue playthrough going now, we decided to record it as a crowd-driven experiment of sorts. If you like what you see, and want more of it, we'll return with more episodes. Just let us know in the comments section below or on YouTube.

This feature was originally posted on June 27th, 2013 but we thought that it deserved another look in honor of the release of the Steve Jobs film.

Back in April within the Batman: Arkham Origins issue, we ran the following written interview with Steve Wozniak. This feature expands on the original interview by including several videos (including the full, unedited interview from his hotel room) that add to the full story behind Steve Wozniak and Jobs creating Breakout for Atari. Read and watch the feature below to learn how the co-founder of Apple Computer developed the ­Atari arcade classic Breakout, how the Apple II was built from the ground up for gaming, and why Steve Jobs dismissed the potential of games.

Louisiana’s party city is famous for Mardi Gras, voodoo, Jazz music, and Cajun food. New Orleans one of American’s most eclectic hubs, and it's surprisingly underused in the world of video games. Developer Hangar 13 felt like the city would be the perfect setting for the next entry in 2K’s open world organized crime series, but the team knew it couldn’t just digitize the city in its current state. Recreating a 1968 version of New Orleans for Mafia III took months of research, and many of the city’s famous landmarks had to be reshaped to ensure that the game was fun as well as believable.

“We actually settled on the city before we picked the time period,” says studio head and creative director Haden Blackman. “We had a short list of cities that we wanted to go to, and we did a lot of concept development for a number of different cities. For us, New Orleans was the one that we gravitated toward because it is such a collision of different musical styles and cultures – you got jazz, and you got voodoo, and you got the French quarter. And all of that mixes together into an interesting culture.”

Discovering a missing pastSince Mafia III takes place in a 1968 version of New Orleans, Hangar 13 had to find old stock footage of the city and comb through black-and-white archives of the period.

Halloween is just a few weeks away. If you don't have the time or skill to create your own Halloween costume that celebrates your love of video games, we've rounded up the best selection of costumes sold at retailers. The selection offers everything from a $900 Master Chief costume to the unexpected Ratchet & Clank outfit. We even gathered a few costumes that toddlers and infants can wear for trick-or-treating purposes.